Here’s
a good interview with Donna Tartt, author of The Goldfinch, the book I’m currently pushing on everyone:
…
“When
people ask you why you did this or that you’re sort of compelled to make up the
reasons. But the real answer is, I don’t know why.” The best answer she can
give is to cite Rudyard Kipling’s maxim: drift, wait, and obey….
With
all her books, she says, what she is striving for is an “immersive experience –
the kind of book that you can absolutely lose yourself in; where you’re in a
different world, your mother calls you, you don’t hear her – that kind of
book.” In short, the kind of books that she loved as a child growing up in
Mississippi, “a girl who loved books for boys” – Jules Verne, Ivanhoe, Robert
Louis Stevenson….
Her
working method is Byzantine. She writes in longhand in large spiral-bound
notebooks, adding thoughts and corrections in red, blue and then green pencil,
and stapling index cards to them to keep track of plot and characters. When it
all starts getting “too messy” she types the manuscript into the computer, then
prints out the drafts on colour-coded paper. “I can pick up the pink draft, and
I know that’s the first one; or the grey draft, or the most recent one is the
blue. So if I need something from an older draft I know where to find it. My
French teacher, many years ago, told me this, and it actually works.”…